Country Neighbors Part 42

"Why," said he, "nothing's happened that I know of."

The part of prudence was to halt, but anxiety hurried her on as if it might have been to the rescue of a child in pain.

"Didn't you see her?" she asked breathlessly.

"Yes, I saw her."

He pa.s.sed a hand over his forehead and smoothed his hair in a way he had, ending the gesture at the back of his neck.

"How'd she look, Jerry? What was she doing?"

"Why," said Jerry, narrowing his eyes, as if he recalled a picture he had found incredible, "she was playing croquet out in the front yard."

"But how'd she look?"

"Why, she's a kind of a dark-complexioned woman. She wears spe'tacles.

She's"--he paused there an instant and caught his breath--"she's pretty fleshy."

"Was she nice to you?"

"Yes, she was nice. She meant to be real nice and kind. She made me"--a spasm twitched his face, and he concluded--"she made me play croquet."

They stood there in the wood loneliness, dapples of sunlight flickering on them through the leaves. Marietta felt a strange wave of something rus.h.i.+ng over her. It might have been mirth, or indignation that somebody had destroyed her old friend's paradise; but it threatened to sweep her from her basis of control.

"You sit down, Jerry," she said soberly. "I'm going to the spring to get you a cup of water, and then we'll have our luncheon."

When she returned, bearing the full cup delicately, he lay like a disconsolate boy, face down upon the ground; so she touched him on the shoulder and said, in a tone of the brisk housewife:--

"Luncheon's ready."

Then Jerry sat up, and ate when she put food into his hand and drank from the cup she gave him. Marietta ate only a crumb here and there from her one bit of bread, for, seeing how hungry he was, she suspected that, in his poet's rapture, he had had no breakfast. She tried to rouse him to the things he loved.

"Only look through there," she said, pointing to a vista where a group of birches were s.h.i.+mmering in green. "I don't know 's I ever see a fountain such as they tell about, but this time in the year, before the leaves have fairly come, seems if the green was like a fountain springing up and never falling back. Maybe, though, it's the word I like, the sound of it. I don't know."

Jerry turned his eyes on her in a quick, keen glance.

"Marietta," he said, "you have real pretty thoughts."

"Do I?" asked Marietta, laughing, without consciousness. She was only glad to have beguiled him from the trouble of his mind. "Well, if I do, I guess you put 'em into my head in the first place." The feast was over, and she folded the napkin and swept away the crumbs. "Want some more water?" she asked, pausing as she repacked the basket.

Jerry shook his head.

"Marietta," said he, "seems if it wa'n't a day since you and I used to be here picnicking."

She laughed again whimsically.

"Well," she said, "when I travel back over the seams I've sewed, looks like a good long day. I guess there's miles enough of 'em to stretch from here to State o' Maine."

Jerry seemed to be speaking from a dream.

"And the others have married and got children growing up," he mused.

"Seems if we'd missed the best of it."

They had risen and stood facing each other, Marietta with the basket in her hand. Jerry took it gently from her and set it on the ground.

"Marietta," he said, "I guess I'm kind of waked up."

Her face quivered. He thought he had never seen her look exactly that way before.

"I'd work terrible hard," said he. "I guess I could make you have an easier time."

Then his appealing eyes met hers, and Marietta, because she had no wish to deny him anything, gave him her hands, and they kissed soberly.

When they walked back to the road, Jerry drew her aside to the birches on the sunny knoll.

"You mustn't lay it up against me," he said brokenly.

"Lay what up?"

Her lips were full and lovely, and her eyes shone with the one look of happiness.

"It's spring with these." He pointed to the birches. "It ain't with us."

"I don't know." Marietta laughed willfully. "Ain't you ever seen an apple-tree blooming in the fall? or a late rose? Well, I have. So, there!"

To Jerry, looking at her, she seemed like a beautiful stranger, met in the way, and he kissed her again.

When they were driving home in their sober intimacy that had yet an undercurrent of that rus.h.i.+ng river of life, Marietta turned suddenly to him.

"Jerry," she said, "when you played croquet, who beat?"

His eyes, meeting hers, took the merry challenge of them and answered it. They both began to laugh, ecstatically, like children.

"She did," said he.

THE MASTER MINDS OF HISTORY

"What's that dry-goods case in the front entry?" asked Elihu Meade.

He had sunk into his particular chair by the kitchen stove, and was drawing off his boots with the luxurious slowness of one whose day's work is done and who may sit by expectant while fragrant warm delights are simmering for supper. His wife, Amarita by name, stood at the stove, piloting apple turnovers in a pool of fat. At a first glance she and her husband seemed an ill-matched pair, he with a thin face and precise patch of whisker at the ear, a noticeable and general meagreness of build, and she dark and small, with a face flas.h.i.+ng vivid intelligence.

Elihu's mother--a large, loosely made, blond old lady--sat by the window, out of range of the lamplight even, knitting by feeling, and doubling her pleasures through keeping her glance out of the window, where a new moon hung.

While she felt the warmth of indoor comfort wafting about her, Amarita cast up a hesitating yet altogether happy look at her husband. She knew from old habit that she must choose her time of approach, but the warmth and the plenitude of supper and her own inner enchantment with what she had to tell convinced her against reason that the time was now.